News in brief from the NFC world and beyond: US files lawsuit against Verifone/Hypercom deal • iPhone 5 unlikely to support NFC payments, says analyst • ‘Paper’ phone unveiled • Vivotech adds NFC to mag stripe terminals • Hashable adds NFC to contacts app • Sequent raises funds • Connecthings invests in Lifera • and more… More
Recent acquisitions by eBay and its PayPal subsidiary are beginning to draw a picture of how the company plans to move from the online world to providing a full mobile shopping service including merchant payments and marketing services for retailers, Techcrunch reports... More
Financial software company Intuit is showcasing a concept demonstration at the Google I/O developers conference in California this week that reimagines its GoPayment mobile credit card processing application using near field communication... More
McDonald’s will have installed contactless point-of-sale terminals in all its restaurants in the UK by the end of this month, Mark Fabes, the fast food giant’s UK IT director, has revealed... More
A new NFC stack from Merchant360 will allow POS terminals to be turned from simple card payments devices into multi-functional NFC access points that retailers can use to process a wide range of emerging mobile payments services, marketing and advertising solutions and even social networking services. More
“We’re working with Google on the development of NFC applications for merchants,” the chief executive of POS terminal maker Ingenico has told French reporters. More
Business software firm Oracle has been conducting experiments with NFC and has found it “too time consuming” to use at the point of sale, the firm’s David Dorf has reported... More
Global payments network Mastercard has announced a plan to make contactless payments a way of life in Australia and New Zealand over the next four years... More
The Silicon Valley-based startup has unveiled a hardware-neutral NFC platform that, co-founder John Wiese has told NFC World, will allow developers to write software applications once and then deploy them on multiple types of NFC phone. More
‘The acquisition… is a major step in our strategic development notably aimed at accelerating the adoption of contactless NFC technology,’ says the French firm’s CEO. More
‘We see this as a strategic and transformative opportunity for Vivotech,’ says company CEO Mick Mullagh, who has plans for an IPO in 2012. Ingenico, meanwhile, is yet to officially announce an acquisition plan but is reported to already be in discussions to buy the business. More
Despite a widespread rollout of contactless cards and POS terminals in the UK, a survey has found that British consumers are confused about what a contactless card is and that cash is still king for the average UK shopper... More
NFC and contactless specialist Vivotech is planning an initial public offering (IPO) as early as 2012, CEO Mick Mullagh has told Bloomberg Business Week... More
Charge Anywhere has unveiled new mobile payment software which can transform Google’s Nexus S smartphone into an NFC payment terminal... More
Google is working with MasterCard and Citigroup on the introduction of NFC mobile payments services, the Wall Street Journal reports:... More
Point-of-sale terminal producer Ingenico has announced that the proportion of its devices shipped with contactless and NFC capabilities doubled in 2010... More
With everyone from Apple, Google and PayPal to mobile operators, coupon issuers and social networks set to need access to contactless POS terminals to bring their NFC plans to market, Verifone’s Paul Rasori tells NFC World how these new players could gain access to merchants’ points-of-sale — and who should foot the bill. More
The mobile phone operator starts delivering on its promise to roll out NFC throughout Europe during 2011, saying opportunities are “virtually limitless”. More
Don Kingsborough, founder of prepaid payments specialist Blackhawk Network, has joined PayPal as the online payments giant moves further towards the world of offline shopping... More
The chief technology officer at Coupons.com has said the future for national coupon schemes lies with near field communication technology... More